Pete Ward, Gods Behaving Badly: Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture (SCM, 2011), 163pp (with thanks to SCM for a review copy)
Pete Ward began his academic career writing about Christian youthwork (for example, Worship and Youth Culture, 1993; Growing Up Evangelical, 1996; Youthwork and the Mission of God, 1997),but more recently as branched out into cultural studies and its relationship to church, worship and theology (Liquid Church, 2002; Selling Worship, 2005; Participation and Mediation, 2008). This latest book is a study of celebrity culture and its similiarities to religion and its use of religious language.
Ward, here and in previous work, has a positive view of culture as something with which the church should engage and embrace. So the argument of Liquid Church claims that the church should embrace a more consumer-shaped and fluid way of being church reflecting the shape of contemporary culture. Selling Worship is a study of the contemporary worship music industry, which does not seek to be overly critical. While his most ambitious work to date, Participation and Mediation argues that church needs to pay attention to the way it participates in, and is mediated by, cultural expression.
God's Behaving Badly has five chapters, the first describing the pheonoma of celebrity worship. The second develops this through the concept of 'representation', which argues that around celebrities, the media is 'mean-making' - celebrities begin to represent certain dreams, lifestyles, desires and in fact are only celebrities because the media determine (represent) them as such. So Ward says 'celebrity images and stories present possibilities, ways of being human, of being individuals' (p.54). The third chapter examines how celebrity worship 'is a kind of religion, or at least has religious elements' (p.57). Ward uses the term 'para-religion'. Chapters four and five, explore what kind of gods celebrities are - their attributes, and the use of theological language - sin, heaven, judgement, revelation, redemption, etc.
This is largely a descriptive piece of work, which is important - it's the first study I know if its kind - but the implications, for example, what does this mean for the church's mission, are generally left unexplored and open for further research and reflection. What emerges from the book is the pervasiveness of this para-religion of celebrity and the need to take it seriously.
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